As I type this, I am looking out on the body of water that has been called the Gulf of Mexico since somewhere around 1550. Of course, like all bodies of water and other geographic features, it was named by humans and has been called by various names at different points in time. Naming things is inherently political, linked to issues such as the power of conquerors, the winners of wars, or sometimes just being in the right place at the right time.
For the most part, we don’t really think about these names unless we are people curious about the past. California, to pick one place I have lived, is strewn with names in Spanish, although I expect there are a fair number of Americans who never, ever stop to consider what San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco mean or why they have those names. It’s just their names.
All Texas school children are taught in seventh grade, where Austin and Houston came from. Dallas may require a little more digging. Side note: I still don’t know why there is a Dallas County and a Houston County in Alabama. I may have looked it up once and have since forgotten.
It occurs to me that I have lived the bulk of my life in states that touch the Gulf. I have lived in either Texas or Alabama for all but six years in California and a year in Colombia. Gee, I wonder if the Mexicans will change the name of “Baja California” to “Alto Mexico” or some such? At any rate, it never once in my life occurred to me to think that the Gulf of Mexico ought to be called anything other than the Gulf of Mexico, because, after all, it’s a gulf and Mexico is like, right there. It never once entered my mind that it was some affront to America’s masculinity (and I use that word very deliberately) that it was called what it was called.
Speaking of name changes, the Trump administration famously changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Because, you know, that’s important.
Look! Here he is with his map and easel!*
To be honest, it struck me at the time, and it still strikes me as the kind of thing a child might think a president does.
On one level, it is just oh so very silly.
Despite the juvenility of it all on one level, it is more serious on several other aspects of it all. There is, for example, the whole banning the AP from the White House because they wouldn’t conform to his will on the name issue.
Then there is the imperialistic tone of it all. It is saying that we in the US are powerful, and therefore, we get to name things after us, not some lesser country. And while that may sound like some pointy-headed (maybe even “woke”) academic concern, it fits a broad assertion of US control of its near abroad.** Consider how Trump also talks about Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Setting aside using the name of the Gulf as a cudgel to affect First Amendment rights or as an international signal of power, even using it as just a little joke is obnoxious because it makes something that wasn’t political (at least in terms of contemporary political discourse) into an overly political item.
Just choosing what to call it becomes an act of allegiance. Call it “Gulf of America,” you signal acceptance. Call it “Gulf of Mexico,” you are being defiant. Call it “the Gulf,” you are avoiding the issue.
It polarizes a term no one thought about for no reason except Trump wanted it, and it reinforces to a certain kind of nativist (and maybe even some nascent nativists) that he is their guy.
America (as in the United States–certainly not the rest of the hemisphere) über alles, dontcha know!
On the one hand, it is kind of a joke, but it is a joke of dominance. To laugh it off is a bit of forced acceptance of the absurdity of it all. While pushing back can cast you in the role of a partisan jerk who doesn’t have a sense of humor. It is like a lot of alt-right humor. It is clearly intended to provoke, but if you get provoked, you are the one who can’t take a joke, but if you don’t get provoked, you are tacitly accepting the joke-that-really-isn’t-a-joke as true in some way.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
There is a definite bullying element to it all. Ha! You have to call it “Gulf of America” because the President said so. It is like a child telling their sibling that they have to behave a certain way because Dad said they had to. The power doesn’t really come from the obviously inherent worth of the action. It comes because a person in power decreed it so.
How very patrimonial.
It creates an unnecessary division. It solves no actual problem. And it will likely be a symbol of polarized America for years to come, even if we return to officially calling it the “Gulf of Mexico.” The president who changes it back will be accused in some quarters of petty politics in a way that ignores the original petty politics of it all. And if it is changed back, we can look forward to any number of “Gulf of America” deadenders wearing t-shirts and having signs to go along with their Confederate Battle Flag collection.
And does the next GOP president change it back?
In this way, it is like a lot of what Trump has done, such as with our NATO allies. What was once understood to be permanent (or as permanent as things can be in the world of human interaction) now feels malleable and perhaps never to be fully set again. And one’s views on the subject mark your tribe forevermore.
I know there are dozens of problems with the Trump administration above this one. One might not even think it is a problem worth commenting upon. But I think it is illustrative of how Trump sows division, and in that way which many of his supporters then revel in wallowing in and amplifying that division.
It is also part and parcel of Trump’s desire to shape reality (or, at least, the perceptions thereof) without any concern for what is actually real.
You know, like taking a Sharpie to a hurricane map.
Or, I dunno, declaring that a man wrongfully imprisoned in a Salvadoran torture prison is not only definitely in a gang, but is a leader of said gang.
There is a danger in someone who thinks they can just say whatever they want and that makes it true.
There is an even greater danger when others nod and amplify the nonsense because the leader said so
*Handy for me that this was the first photo on the White House Flickr page. This photo op was linked to the signing of an EO on mining the sea floor. See NPR: Scientists are raising the alarm about Trump’s deep sea mining executive order. Apparently, it is a go-ahead to do something that the rest of the world has said they are not going to do until rules can be established. But, as is known, rules and agreements are for chumps and losers.
**IYKTYK
